


Red Sea

by Gitaxian



Category: Worth the Candle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:01:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24181012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gitaxian/pseuds/Gitaxian
Kudos: 31





	Red Sea

The first thing you need to understand is that dividing is fucking terrifying. It sounds neat, sure. That’s what we thought the first time. We’d been alone for so long, having two of us seemed like a miracle.

It didn’t take long for us to realize the consequences. Two of us meant twice as many mouths to feed, without twice as much food. We were right back in a place we’d been before, again and again, and we knew it would end the exact same way it always did. We’d never been good at dealing with others, and them being us didn’t change that. No amount of you will make you less alone.

That’s what makes it scary. Every time I divide, there’s that same moment of panic knowing I might be the one who gets the short end of the stick. I’ve seen it happen to thousands of me. Done it myself to thousands of me, because it was the only way to survive.

I turn around, and see myself on the other side of the line, and a dozen guns pointed at me, and realize it’s my turn. That brings with it the other kind of panic. The kind I always have to fight back. The kind that reminds me I have a way out, I always have a way out, if I’m just willing to use it.

I could, right now. I could start dividing again and again and again and one of me would surely escape, some part of me would live to see another day, no matter how many others die in the process. It’s an instinct I have to keep constantly suppressed. What they want me to do is dangerous, but I’m not about to die yet.

I put on the suit. I’ll probably never know how we managed to get these; I’m not important enough to be told that kind of thing. Latch on the safety line. (For the suit’s safety in the event of my death, of course.) The supply train will be lowered in after me, and it’ll be my job to guide it through the red to the colony I’m about to be in charge of.

I step into the portal and sink beneath the red.

~~~

Down here, my only comfort is the numbers. Air supply, food supply, water supply, materials, equipment, schedules, plans, and most importantly, the number of me. Strictly controlled, no more or less than necessary at any given time. I’m supposed to be in charge of managing them, but really it’s the other way around. They tell me what to do, by showing me there was never any other option. It’s the most relaxed I can remember being in decades.

Today, they tell me I haven’t run an external maintenance check in over a week. I’m in the suit again, waiting in the bloodlock for another me to open the outer door. The vents open, and the claustrophobic capsule begins to fill. I take an involuntary breath as it reaches the suit’s viewport. I can’t see or hear anything outside now. Instead, I have to feel my environment in the way only a blood mage can. I sense the walls of the chamber, the outer door sliding open to reveal the flow of the currents outside.

I glide along the edge of the colony, over hallways and under pipes and around the curve of the central habitation sphere. I feel their contours through perturbations in the bloodflow for signs of wear and damage. There’s a crack in a recently-constructed hull segment; I make a mental note to order repairs and keep myselves out of that area in the meantime.

I’m on my way back when I feel it. Somewhere out in the distance, on the very edge of my perception, an object about my size, drifting. A predator? Unlikely, it’s too large to be a bloodworm and too passive to be anything else I can think of. I could go back and call in the security team, but by then whatever it is might be gone. The thought to divide intrudes. Send another me out there, while I head back. I remind myself of the numbers. We’re already at capacity; if I do that only one of us would get to go back and I don’t like fifty-fifty odds.

So out I go. Carefully; end up too far out and I could find myself beyond where I can feel what direction the colony’s in, utterly lost. As I approach I focus more of my attention on it. It’s roughly human-sized, but I can’t get a good read on the shape. It must be pretty complex, to create such a mess of whirling microcurrents. Just a little closer...

And then it moves.

Fuck. It’s me.

I have a million questions. She doesn’t have a suit, how can she survive out here? Has one of us been dividing without permission? Is she even from the colony? How many more of me might be floating out there? I push all of these aside to focus on something far more important: she’s hurtling towards me, Claret Spear outstretched.

I can’t make one myself, not without piercing the suit. I try to pull back, but I have too much momentum to get away. She’s almost on me, I don’t have a choice, I have to-

I don’t know if I was a moment too slow, or just unlucky, but there’s a gash in my suit and it’s filling rapidly. I have maybe two minutes to live, not enough time to get back to the colony, and that means no reason to hold back. I form the spear, ripping through my glove, and keep dividing. Four of me, then eight, then sixteen, I lunge-

~~~

The trick’s actually pretty simple. I’d be surprised nobody else had figured it out before, but most mages probably don’t spend much time submerged in blood, and when you’re drowning experimentation gets pretty hard. I don’t know if any of the others who survived the fight managed to figure it out, because all I can feel in every direction is drifting corpses.

I have no idea what direction the colony is in. I guess that doesn’t matter anymore though. If I can survive out here, I don’t need any of that. If we can survive out here, I doubt it’ll last long anyway. No more numbers, no more limits, no more subsisting off of whatever scraps I can take from myself.

Maybe this time will be different.

~~~

I couldn’t change direction even if I wanted to. I’m surrounded by me, more every second, moving in tight formation. It takes me a moment to realize what it reminds me of. I haven’t seen a fish in seven decades.

I feel our target’s approach in the blood that parts around it. It’s huge. A thousand times bigger than us, way too many jaws and claws and tentacles. I’ve heard that one of these things wiped out an entire colony. It opens one of its larger mouths wide and a powerful current takes hold of us, drawing us in. Too powerful for us to counteract. Instead we push to the sides as it pulls us in, try to escape the vortex and land on it. I pull away just in time, slam hard into its slimy skin. Most of me don’t make it. I feel them vanish into the maw, or get sliced to pieces, or be drained by the bloodworms that rise off of it to meet us. It doesn’t matter. We divide again and again, dozens of us to replace every one that died.

I form a spear from the blood of my bisected corpse nearby, and grab it just in time to pierce the worm charging at me. Then I get to work. Every gash I carve in the leviathan causes noxious not-blood to leak out. We’re lucky we have suits, even if only one of them’s real. Hopefully not one of the ones that ended up in this thing’s digestive tract. I remember putting it on when I fled, but even if one of us wanted to call attention to the fact that she had something so valuable we can’t tell who ended up with it.

I keep carving deeper into its flesh, looking for something vital. I keep dividing, more of me joining in, crowding me, pushing me forwards. I ignore the struggles and deaths of thousands of me to focus on the task at hand. Kill this thing or die.

Eventually it stops writhing. We let ourselves drift back, out from the field of viscera. It’s not an ideal location, too close to the edge of the zone where predators are ever-present, but hollowing out the vast corpse is still our best option for shelter. (Even with no need for sustenance, we still need somewhere safe to sleep.) Heading back to the other colonies is definitely not an option, not after stealing this suit. Of course, only one of us actually has it. We’re all considering the same thing - maybe it would be better to quietly slip away now, just in case.

~~~

My sense has become much more precise. I can feel the blood running through my veins, and that means I can track every single one of me in the area. That’s how I know we’re losing.

We threw everything we had at them. Hundreds of us died to destroy the blues’ colony. (Tearing apart the place I’d spent so long building up.) Thousands died to take the portal. (We’ve been submerged for so long that being able to see feels strange.) Every second dozens more are killed. (You can’t imagine what it’s like to watch yourself die again and again.)

They’ve driven us back into the facility. I could run back to the portal, escape through there, but when they break through they’ll close it, and I’d be trapped there forever. I have to keep dividing and keep fighting.

I reach out through the walls to the blood of the nearest enemy. Her blood is my blood, I control it. I reach out and form the spear, bursting free from her skull. It only takes a second.

That’s not fast enough. In the time it took me to do that, she’s already divided twice. We can’t kill ourselves faster than we grow. We fall back before the void-armed tide of flesh can round the corner and start shooting.

Duplicate, kill, flee. Duplicate, kill, flee. I know how this is going to end, but I don’t have a choice. We retreat deeper and deeper, through hallways and laboratories and storerooms, until we’ve been pushed all the way back to the portal itself and there’s nowhere left to run.

The tide arrives.

It really is a tide, a growing wave that chokes the corridor so densely the pressure pushes them forwards. If it weren’t for that fucking entad we’d have drowned them in their own corpses by now.

We’re packed in just as tightly, huddled around the portal, as they open fire. I can’t see through the crowd, but I can feel the blood of dozens of me vanish in an instant. It’s hopeless. I give up on killing them, focus on dividing, hoping some other me can delay my death for a few precious seconds.

We press together around the portal, tighter and tighter as the tide fills the room. I feel like I’m drowning in myself. Me, me, me, pressing down in every direction. No escape. And even if I could, where would I escape to? Out into the zone, crawling with millions of me? Back into the red, drifting in complete darkness?

(The tide creeps closer.)

It never matters. Up here or down there, under crushing control or overwhelming freedom, I could never get away from me.

(Only a few more bodies between me and death.)

I know it doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve seen a better world, I was a part of it once. But no matter where I run or what I build, more of me always follows to tear it apart. If I could just be alone again…

(There’s nothing left between me and the tide. A dozen guns are pointed at me.)

And then I realize.

What’s there to get away from? The blood flowing through their veins is mine, a part of me,  _ is  _ me. How could I ever have thought otherwise? It never mattered where I ran to, because I was always the one running there, bringing my destruction with me.

I was always alone.

I celebrate this revelation by twisting my newfound limbs into a million tiny knives, to cut free of their prisons. The flesh falls away and vanishes, I remain. Screams, splatters, silence. And then…

Then I’m alone. I could leave, fight my way out of here, carve a path of destruction through the entire zone. It would be easy. There’s nothing any of them could do to stop me anymore. But what would be the point? I’ll still be just as alone, no matter how much of me there is.

I step into the portal and sink beneath the red.


End file.
